The "culture of debate" is not a new question either for the workers' movement or for the ICC. Nevertheless, the evolution of history has obliged our organisation - from the turn of the new century on - to return to this question and examine it more closely. There were two main developments which obliged us to do so, the first one being the appearance of a new generation of revolutionaries and the second, the internal crisis we suffered at the beginning of this century.

We are publishing below substantial extracts from the first part of an orientation text proposed for discussion in the ICC during the summer of 2001, and adopted by our organisation’s Extraordinary Conference at the end of March 2002.